Women can have everything but a personality in director Simon West’s offensively bland work-life balance comedy, “Bride Hard.” Rebel Wilson stars as an American spy on the hunt for a single redeeming quality in Magenta Light Studios’ wedding party-turned-hostage negotiation. It’s been 13 years since Anna Camp broke out with Wilson in “Pitch Perfect,” and the box office success of that franchise made the actresses’ reunion in a new movie inevitable. Still, they deserve a better match than “Bride Hard.”
The problems start with Shaina Steinberg’s misguided and shallow script. A pale imitation of “Bridesmaids” (which earns its punny association with the Bruce Willis action classic even less), Wilson and Camp’s latest film sets out to answer, “Should these childhood besties stay friends?” Instead, it collapses into an ad-laden sameness that is not only deeply unfunny but recalls the infamous “Game Night” question: “How can that be profitable for Frito Lay?” It will also have plenty of people walking out of theaters to Google, “Is that the mass shooter from Season 6 of ‘Grey’s Anatomy?” And yes, it is.
Related Stories
Before the product placement and surprise Michael O’Neill performance, Betsy (Camp) is getting married and having her bachelorette party in Paris. That’s the dream for plenty of brides, but things are already tense between Betsy and her maid of honor, Sam (Wilson). Absent and flaky thanks to her woefully nondescript superintelligence work, Sam is introduced through a sequence that sees her juggling plot points from “27 Dresses,” slapstick beats akin to “Spy,” and Anna Chlumsky as her intense type-A competitor. A fellow bridesmaid and Betsy’s future sister-in-law, Virginia can’t wait to swoop in and take over when Sam screws up.
“If you tell Betsy, you have to kill Betsy,” explains Sam’s friend from work, Nadine (Sherry Cola), after the disastrous mission/falling out in France. She’s only half-joking, but even the supportive chemistry between the two colleagues seems like a potential threat to Betsy. Rounding out her bridal party in a lopsided narrative structure, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Gigi Zumbado are likely to be remembered not by their characters’ names but as Other Bridesmaid No. 1 and Other Bridesmaid No. 2.
Randolph has never met a role she couldn’t crush, and the Oscar winner gets in some good-enough moments as Lydia by bouncing off a sexy reverend. TV actress Zumbado is instantly likable as Zoe, a pregnant cutie whose bubbly energy is reminiscent of Katharine McPhee’s performance in “The House Bunny.” Still, the five-part bridal party is unremarkable. Even on the day, dressed in bright red around Camp as their blazing-white center, “Bride Hard” paints its heavyweight cast inexplicably beige.
Celebrating in Savannah, Georgia (yippee-ki-yay for tax breaks!), the happy couple hosts their wedding at an idyllic southern estate. A torrent of floral prints and pastels greets the now ex-maid of honor Sam, who, even robbed of her handguns, is giving “spy” by wearing all black. Soon, Betsy and her fiancé, Ryan (Sam Huntington), will both be beneficiaries to the Caldwell family’s vast whiskey fortune. But before the bride and groom can say, “I do,” shots ring out, and Stephen Dorff arrives as the “Bride Hard” version of Hans Gruber. He and his henchmen are ready to object to Betsy and Ryan’s union, but they don’t know Sam is hiding something up her half-sleeves, too.
Having directed “Con Air” and “The Expendables 2,” West is an action expert. Still, titles from the 2006 “When a Stranger Calls” remake to last year’s “Old Guy” have given him an underwhelming reputation. He struggles with story as much as ever here, getting lost in a paint-by-numbers idea that even rendered sloppily should be sharper. Watching Sam beat a man with curling irons before stabbing him with a cake stand resembles something like fun — but “Bride Hard” is never funny. That kills the mood faster than a bad toast, but even dead on arrival, this wedding feels like torture.
The actress formerly known as Fat Amy has a knack for amping up simple comedic lines, but she can’t act her way out of a script with zero functional jokes. One sequence includes a wink to film noir that comes out looking more like a stroke, when Sam says, “You’re giving it up like a good whore on the side of the highway.” For starters, it’s 2025, and you don’t pick up sex workers on the highway. (Street corners, maybe.) Worse still, the line makes Sam look like an even bigger asshole than she already does in an affair that seems practically designed to leave Wilson standing at the altar.
Released at the peak of Pride Month to U.S. audiences facing a severe cultural valley, “Bride Hard” goes from shitty to infuriating when you consider all that Wilson has been through in the entertainment industry. She got married to fashion designer Ramona Agruma last year, and Camp debuted her new girlfriend Jade Whipkey at the film’s red-carpet premiere. Critiquing “Bride Hard” for its anti-feminism would be a bigger waste of time than railing against the lady “Ghostbusters,” but you have to think these women would have made an all-around better — and gayer! — movie if they were directing.
Even assuming the best intentions with “Bride Hard,” this abysmal pick-me of a film cannot present a cohesive reality. There’s a “My Neck, My Back” sing-along that falls flat, and the arrival of heartthrob Justin Hartley (“This Is Us”) goes from promising to painful when you appreciate just how badly all this talent got fumbled. Outrageously shoddy special effects dovetail with mortifying commercial placement that makes every glossy frame seem cheap.
The selling out begins with a nod to Lay’s Potato Chips before the movie plugs Sunchips as well. “Bride Hard” also features the humiliating suggestion that a fabulously rich woman would do her wedding day bridal makeup exclusively using E.L.F. cosmetics. (No shade to the budget-friendly brand; long may she conceal.)
Stories about childhood friends struggling to stay connected are empathetic by nature, but audiences remember movies like “Superbad,” and even lesser titles like “Tag,” for their uniqueness and specificity. Moviegoers didn’t need a lot of time watching Willis play an emotionally stunted operative in “Die Hard” to understand why he’d bring down a high-rise for his estranged wife. And yet, a bloated first act can’t save Betsy and Sam from the sense that their history isn’t special, and their bond doesn’t matter.
Sure, there’s a sweet home video sequence during the opening credits, and bloopers at the end to trick you into thinking you had a good time. But even the most committed cinephiles should forgive anyone who averts their gaze from Camp and Wilson’s disastrous misfire. It’s a matter of etiquette as much as self-preservation — and reason enough for the stars to divorce from “Bride Hard” and take their “Pitch Perfect” party somewhere their talent won’t be, in the parlance of the Barden Bellas, cut off.
Grade: D-
From Magenta Light Studios, “Bride Hard” is now in theaters.
Want to stay up to date on IndieWire’s film reviews and critical thoughts? Subscribe here to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings — all only available to subscribers.
